Listen how they say your name. If they can't say that right, there's no way they're going to know how to treat you proper, neither.

Libraries are where it all begins.

It really wasn't until I was in college when I began to write more and more, and I realized I was scheduling my entire life around my writing

I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls, because I think those are the two elements of poetry.

Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture.

The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.